Seamus Heaney

I bought Seamus Heaney's "The Spirit Level" last month, knowing that he is a Nobelist, a multiple prize-winning poet, world-famous.

Yet I could not enjoy his poetry at all; his language and imagery are too convoluted, seem too fake. There's a deliberate complexity in his work, an inconsistency of subject which makes him hard to read. I'll try Beowulf when I see it, but you can keep the rest.

When I compare his verse to that of Kate Clancy, whose "Slattern" I also bought, I find that hers is more direct, more accessible, with a clarity of description and allusion that Heaney just does not show.

:o(